But why, when the boys wanted to be begged off, was the schoolmistress to be their advocate?  Because Grace Harvey exercised, without intending anything of the kind, an almost mesmeric influence on every one in the little town.  Goodness rather than talent had given her wisdom, and goodness rather than courage a power of using that wisdom, which, to those simple, superstitious folk, seemed altogether an inspiration.  There was a mystery about her, too, which worked strongly on the hearts of the West-country people.  She was supposed to be at times “not right;” and wandering intellect is with them, as with many primitive peoples, an object more of awe than of pity.  Her deep melancholy alternated with bursts of wild eloquence, with fantastic fables, with entreaties and warnings against sin, full of such pity and pathos that they melted, at times, the hardest hearts.  A whole world of strange tales, half false, half true, had grown up around her as she grew.  She was believed to spend whole nights in prayer; to speak with visitors from the other world; even to have the power of seeing into futurity.  The intensity of her imagination gave rise to the belief that she had only to will, and she could see whom she would, and all that they were doing, even across the seas; her exquisite sensibility, it was whispered, made her feel every bodily suffering she witnessed, as acutely as the sufferer’s self, and in the very limb in which he suffered.  Her deep melancholy was believed to be caused by some dark fate—­by some agonising sympathy with evil-doers; and it was sometimes said in Aberalva,—­“Don’t do that, for poor Grace’s sake.  She bears the sins of all the parish.”

So it befell that Grace Harvey governed, she knew not how or why, all hearts in that wild simple fishing-town.  Rough men, fighting on the quay, shook hands at Grace’s bidding.  Wives who could not lure their husbands from the beer-shop, sent Grace in to fetch them home, sobered by shame:  and woe to the stranger who fancied that her entrance into that noisy den gave him a right to say a rough word to the fair girl!  The maidens, instead of envying her beauty, made her the confidant of all their loves; for though many a man would gladly have married her, to woo her was more than any dared; and Gentleman Jan himself, the rightful bully of the quay, as being the handsomest and biggest man for many a mile, beside owning a tidy trawler and two good mackerel-boats, had said openly, that if any man had a right to her, he supposed he had; but that he should as soon think of asking her to marry him, as of asking the moon.